Wildfires In Greenland Just Became A Very Real Thing

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Landsat 8 captured this picture of a wildfire near Greenland's second largest village.NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/Landsat8/USGS

Over three quarters of Greenland is covered by a massive sheet of ice up to 2 miles thick and larger than any other hunk of frozen stuff outside of Antarctica. Yet for the past two weeks, an unusual amount of wildfires have been springing up in the normally damp bogs of peat and other vegetation along the western edge of the ice sheet.

While no one has been able to locate Greenland's historical wildfire records, if such things exist, satellite data from recent years show a dramatic increase in fire activity starting in 2015, and this year's wildfire season has already more than doubled what was observed two years ago:

To wrap up: wildfires have occurred in the past over Greenland but 2017 is exceptional in number of active fire detections by MODIS pic.twitter.com/2HGaVieTEe

According to a report by Eric Holthaus in Grist, it's possible that warming has allowed for the growth of new, woody shrubs along the edge of Greenland that fuel fires started perhaps by the very rare lightning strike or by local hunters and fishermen and encouraged by drought conditions.

Holthaus concludes with the disturbing possibility that soot and ash from the wildfires could be blown onto the ice sheet, darkening its surface, speeding up the melting process and creating a scary new feedback loop.

But in the short term, the wildfires are leading local police in Greenland to issue some very unusual warnings of their own.

The fire was imaged by a multispectral camera on the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite on August 8.ESA

"Due to large wildfires in Middle Greenland, Greenlandic Police discourages all traffic – including hiking and hunting – in two areas around Nassuttooq and Amitsorsuaq," reads a post from law enforcement on Facebook. "The fire releases smoke up to 2 kilometers height. The smoke spreads several hundred kilometers in all directions... The smoke can result in people losing orientation in the areas."

While there is a chance of rain in the forecast for the area, police say the fires are expected to burn on, at least for a few more days.

After the last ember is extinguished, it still will remain to be seen if summer blazes become a recurring new feature in a land of increasing fire and receding ice.

I've covered science, technology, the environment and politics for outlets including CNET, PC World, BYTE, Wired, AOL and NPR. I currently produce the Warm Regards podcast and I've written e-books on Android and Alaska.